I love this completely brainless non-argument of "You are grouped with everyone around you all the time"....have you never heard the expression " The loneliest place is amongst a crowd of strangers" ?
If you want to have a group & have a social experience in GW2 you need a guild, you need to do dungeons. The open-world game is for mindlessly zerging around, it is the quintessential essence of massively single-player refined into an art-form.
Humans have not yet evolved a truly engaging hive-mind so zerging is always going to be unsatisfying because there's just zero real interaction going on, you are all sharing the virtual space co-operatively, but if you vanished nobody would bat an eyelid.
I love this completely brainless non-argument of "You are grouped with everyone around you all the time"....have you never heard the expression " The loneliest place is amongst a crowd of strangers" ?
If you want to have a group & have a social experience in GW2 you need a guild, you need to do dungeons. The open-world game is for mindlessly zerging around, it is the quintessential essence of massively single-player refined into an art-form.
Humans have not yet evolved a truly engaging hive-mind so zerging is always going to be unsatisfying because there's just zero real interaction going on, you are all sharing the virtual space co-operatively, but if you vanished nobody would bat an eyelid.
Love that expression
I agree. It is somewhat unsettling when people tell you 'but you are always grouped up and playing with others so it is a social MMO'. But where is the communication? one can be lonely among the zerg too if all are just running around like silent bobbing heads.
And God knows i have tried, many..many..many times to strike a conversation but other than ocassional ok...yes and no.... people just don't want to talk. So i stick to my guild for socialising.
/yell chat is usually has a conversation going, people pointing out what's happening where in the area or what Champions are up etc... Hell, I have no idea how, but while finishing up Hinterlands tonight the map chat had a huge debate going on about rape.
Yeah I agree with the OP. Either you are in a Zerg or you are playing solo. The fact that other people are in the same event as you at least dont give the same lonely feeling as in SW:TOR but it is not cooperative either, it is just me doing the same thing as some random stranger beside me.
I've not played GW2 & I have no plans to play it, but on the question of unsocial people in these MMO's is a big problem for these games in the long term.
Some people commented above that "I want to play with others, but I dont want to talk to them." Well, that's just a stupid statement right there as if that's the case, you might aswell have the devs provide you with a game full of bots OR maybe the people with this stupid point of view only really want a solo game where the A.I. is so good it's pretty much human, so they get that from MMO's provided by the other players they never talk to.
I stopped playing my current MMO's recently because I felt like I was playing with Bots instead of people, or I might aswell be playing with bots. Solo rpg's do "pve" better than any MMO can provide & PvP games like first person shooters do "pvp" better and more balanced than any MMO could hope to anyway. So why even play MMO's then? The only reason is to play/interact & join a community within these games. Otherwise you're just fooling yourself.
Finally, before some solo-oriented player comes along and states that they are a "special little snowflake that deserves to be allowed to play these MMO's anyway they want because they bought/sub the same as anyone else", I say to them that they are playing the game wrong & they should be (and hopefully are) in a miniority that the developers of MMO's should happily be ignoring. The devs of these games should be asking themselves "does this feature make people interact with other players?" If not, then it should be either dropped completely or pushed way down the priority list, imo.
C'mon I thought pretty much all new MMO's were nothing but solo online games but GW2 takes the grand prize here. No one groups at all, ever...
I feel like I am playing a solo game.
I havent played a solo rpg in like 10 yrs and this aspect of GW2 is driving me absolutly crazy. I play MMO's to interact and overcome challenges with like minded players I meet in game.
I left TERA for this?
I like the games asthetics and artwork but this lack of any social interaction is killing me and I see myself going back to TERA pretty soon now.
There is just really not much point in lvling to 80 if I am doing it without mingling with a single real life human being?
Is this what our society has become? Anti social freAKS THAT ARE HATING ON EVERY OTHER HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET? iT'S BAD ENOUGH driving around in my car and observing how pissed off about 90% of everyone I meet is but it should be different in an mmo game where everyone is expected to have fun in an online game.
ANyone else feel this way.
I am not in a guild yet so hopefully when and if I get in one this will change or it will sadly be uninstalled and sold to a friend.
i think you should find a guild
by guild i mean real guild not zerg guild
smaller guild are more socialized than these big ones where no one know eachother and are full ofguys who farm influence points and never talk to others
In my experience GW2 is extremely anti-social. Probably the most anti-social MMO (if you even want to call it an MMO) I've ever partaken in. There's no need to group-up and coordinate with other players while leveling. Everyone is a one man army in a sea of zerg.
I've yet to interact with any other player outside of my RL friends and the random guild invite and I'm now level 65.
For those who are going to say "join a guild", well... I often join a guild through interaction with other players in-game that I meet along the way.
Not grouping is common in virtually every MMO these days. Check the individual forums and there will be a thread about it somewhere. It's the players, not the games.
So, stop being so passive and waiting for someone to interact with you - START interacting. Set the ball rolling.
Join a guild for regular chat. Or stop for a moment and participate in casual conversations in /m or /s - they happen all the time. Join DE crowd for some mindless zerg. Or get a group for dungeon. Really, GW2 isn't very different from other MMOs in this department.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
Join a guild for regular chat. Or stop for a moment and participate in casual conversations in /m or /s - they happen all the time. Join DE crowd for some mindless zerg. Or get a group for dungeon. Really, GW2 isn't very different from other MMOs in this department.
its much more unsocial than any other mmo in the market atm
Join a guild for regular chat. Or stop for a moment and participate in casual conversations in /m or /s - they happen all the time. Join DE crowd for some mindless zerg. Or get a group for dungeon. Really, GW2 isn't very different from other MMOs in this department.
its much more unsocial than any other mmo in the market atm
Hah....I found SWTOR to be much, much, much more desolate in the social aspect than GW2.
I remember reading how GW2 will change the social structure of MMOS and people will communicate more and yet once again we are faced with silent community. Yes we play on side of each other but not with each other.
People talk when they want to talk. For example, I don't feel communication starved. I talk to people all the time - at work and at home. I have foums to discuss things I'm interested in. When I have a question, I'll probably google it or ask it on the official forums.
Once in a while I write something in /m but generally speaking I don't log in just to chat. I usually stop to revive someone or help in a tough fight so in a way I let my actions speak for me.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
You know how many convo's I've struck up with people by rezzing randoms? Lots. Dead bodies are like campfires... People all come in to help, gossip, and then move on.
Honestly, only people who've yet to "say" back to me are people with names like xoichou or li Ching or the like.
So, the OP is mad, because no one talks to him? You mean a game where people probably started playing with RL friends, or brought a Guild over from a different game, or have their own "crew" they play with and probably have skype/TS/Vent is antisocial? You mean a game that almost forces team play and cooperation with strangers is antisocial.
Look, man. I'm not sure what the big bill is with some of these guys complaining about this is, but some people just don't want to talk to you. Though I've talked to plenty of complete strangers in game and had a good laugh and danced for a few minutes before parting ways. I've even had people group up with me for some jumping puzzles that were really difficult, or for a boss in a cave that was sort of off the radar.
So because a random stranger won't just stop and have a long drawn out conversation with you and tell you about his kids the game is antisocial? Hmm..so lets transfer this same community to a different game and see if it gets any better. Lets all go play, hmm Aion, and everyone make a whatever class you want. Most classes in that game, from what I remember, could solo most things. So I think you'll see even less communication. Let's go to SW:TOR...need I say more?
GW is probably the most social game I've played. People, or rather groups of people may not talk to each other, but we're all there playing together which is a hell of a lot more than what other games gave us. Most games wanted you at each others throats, or competing for mining nodes.
My advice to you...if you want people to talk to you...try talking to them? Most gamers these days aren't going to just come to you like some outreach program.
Depend on game experience i think, it have been much different for me, i often talk with people and meet some nice one, The game itself doesn't punish you for sharing the game experience and more than often i decided to carry on with some people and do more quest. If your problem is grouping in the litteral term of it, its a no issue since grouping option doesn't give much except a private chat and some dots.
As well in wvw my server is pretty much active and i got to know meet and befriend some guys and guild, so i don't see the issue, but as i said everyone experience can be different and i am very sociable.
The way it is now works perfectly for me. I can play with ad-hoc groups of real people without any barriers or limitations, making it more organic and interesting then playing with bots. I can also socially interact with people because i chose to, not because the game forces me to.
In fact, i think it's quite amazing in any game that manages to implement such systems. I can be the lonliest lone-wolf in the world with a phobia of social interaction, and still play a social game with other people without being scared off. The barriers to social interaction are removed. And i think that's what it's all about, removing barriers. Not creating systems that force people together for the sake of being "social". That tends to lead to more conflicts then friendships.
But as a wise man once said "I can only show you the door"...
I think his issue is that GW2 feels like walking downtown on the main strip. Sure there are lots of people but no one really ackowledges that other people around them. They go about there own business. Sure you have some people who are sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe talking and interacting with each other but for the most part its just people all walking past each other lookng up long enough to not bump into anyone.
I can easily see how someone could feel this way with DEs. I have done a number of DEs and it basicly is the same thing, a crowd of random people all just zerging the objective and doing their own thing in a crowd and once then the majority slip back into the shadows.
I will say though to the OP. If you want to be social then do so and don't expect someone else or the game to do it for you. Most people who play MMOs nowadays play them as single player RPGs and everyone around them may as well be an NPC. You need to find the minority who play MMORPGs as they should be, group based.
I think his issue is that GW2 feels like walking downtown on the main strip. Sure there are lots of people but no one really ackowledges that other people around them. They go about there own business. Sure you have some people who are sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe talking and interacting with each other but for the most part its just people all walking past each other lookng up long enough to not bump into anyone.
I can easily see how someone could feel this way with DEs. I have done a number of DEs and it basicly is the same thing, a crowd of random people all just zerging the objective and doing their own thing in a crowd and once then the majority slip back into the shadows.
I will say though to the OP. If you want to be social then do so and don't expect someone else or the game to do it for you. Most people who play MMOs nowadays play them as single player RPGs and everyone around them may as well be an NPC. You need to find the minority who play MMORPGs as they should be, group based.
Also, from what I've seen, most people came to this game with friends and already have small cliques put together. Wether it be a big guild, or a small group of friends thats how it is now adays. People move sort of like a pack of wolves but are always willing to take on new members to the group. I've met several friends so far, same as I did in MMO's before. No different. I think another poster had it right. It's all about the individuals experience. But if you want to be social. You have to try to be social. No handouts.
Sadly the social aspect of current day MMO's is almost non-existent. I enjoy the social part of MMO's if I didn't I'd play console games. Hopefully this trend will end. However I don't see that happening. All these themepark MMO's today don't have a solid social community, because after 6 months or so the content is done and the only people left are fan boi's and the elitist PVP punks.
SWTOR almost turned me off to MMO's for good, thankfully the news of Vanguard going F2P got me to resub and I couldn't be happier. Sandpark games like VG have great communities where people actually converse and group often not just to do one quest or dungeon. VG is a dying breed though. Mordern day MMO's have an average shelf life of about 6 months. The studio's money grab what they can in that time and have another title to replace it.
I haven't bought GW2 yet mainly because of the SWTOR debacle. That being said it's just not Bioware or any other company the whole industry and the themepark design has changed the social climate of MMOs.
I am one of the "anti-social" players. I do respond if talked to but I don't join parties or guilds. My reason - I am a serious, sensitive person. There are too many rectums in mmos. Barrens chat is mild in comparison to some of the chat I have seen since WOW. Sure I like humor (and I did enjoy the Chuck Norris jokes most of the time) but the insults I can do without.
If you want to socialize that is what forums are for. When I am in the game I want to play not stand around at the "water cooler".
Though you can classify me as anti-social one of the reasons that I love RIFT and GW2 is that you can be in groups fighting for a common good. My favorite times are being in groups and having to overcome enemies. But I also like to play games at my own pace so though forced grouping can be fun I don't do it to the exclusion of everything else.
As for guilds - in my mmo beginnings (10 years ago) I joined a lot of guilds. I found only two that were not "clique" based. If you were not part of the "cool" group you were basically tolerated and nothing else. Of the two that I enjoyed one fell apart after a tragedy struck the founders and the other I had to leave because I moved and could not keep the same playing times. In the last few years my guild experience has not been fulfilling at all. You can blame it on me, I am just too sensitive.
C'mon I thought pretty much all new MMO's were nothing but solo online games but GW2 takes the grand prize here. No one groups at all, ever...
I feel like I am playing a solo game.
I havent played a solo rpg in like 10 yrs and this aspect of GW2 is driving me absolutly crazy. I play MMO's to interact and overcome challenges with like minded players I meet in game.
I left TERA for this?
I like the games asthetics and artwork but this lack of any social interaction is killing me and I see myself going back to TERA pretty soon now.
There is just really not much point in lvling to 80 if I am doing it without mingling with a single real life human being?
Is this what our society has become? Anti social freAKS THAT ARE HATING ON EVERY OTHER HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET? iT'S BAD ENOUGH driving around in my car and observing how pissed off about 90% of everyone I meet is but it should be different in an mmo game where everyone is expected to have fun in an online game.
ANyone else feel this way.
I am not in a guild yet so hopefully when and if I get in one this will change or it will sadly be uninstalled and sold to a friend.
Agreed, no compulsory grouping, no socializing other than the RP.
I have the exact opposite feeling. Maybe it's because I just got done with two single-player MMOs in TOR and TSW, but I find GW2 to be refreshingly group-heavy. The only difference is you don't actually have to form the group. You're just always grouped with everyone around you. I love it.
Thet last time I socialized in a game without a guild was Shadowbane, back in the days of getting 10 people together and grinding out mob pulls for hours and hours without end. Do you really want to go back to those days? What is it you want exactly? What would make the game more "social" for you, short of being Ultima Online or like you said...joining a guild like you would have to do in any MMO these days from WoW on-down.
Wow.. that's a the most fan boy biased definition of group play i have ever seen. Just being in the same area with other players and hitting the same mob is NOT group play. GW2's leveling experience is way more single player than any themepark MMO out there at the moment, except WoW's. In TOR you must form a group and work WITH the people participating in order to do the content in the heroic areas. In GW2 things go like this: your sylvari ranger is questing in an area when a "new event" message pops up. You rush to the scene along with everyone else, zerg / dps the enemy down and then everyone goes on his way.
So far my only interaction with other players outside the guild i'm in, and by ineraction i DON'T mean hiting the same target, is when i revive someone. I tried to form groups while questing in Kessex Hills and no one was interested.
So, the OP is mad, because no one talks to him? You mean a game where people probably started playing with RL friends, or brought a Guild over from a different game, or have their own "crew" they play with and probably have skype/TS/Vent is antisocial? You mean a game that almost forces team play and cooperation with strangers is antisocial.
Look, man. I'm not sure what the big bill is with some of these guys complaining about this is, but some people just don't want to talk to you. Though I've talked to plenty of complete strangers in game and had a good laugh and danced for a few minutes before parting ways. I've even had people group up with me for some jumping puzzles that were really difficult, or for a boss in a cave that was sort of off the radar.
So because a random stranger won't just stop and have a long drawn out conversation with you and tell you about his kids the game is antisocial? Hmm..so lets transfer this same community to a different game and see if it gets any better. Lets all go play, hmm Aion, and everyone make a whatever class you want. Most classes in that game, from what I remember, could solo most things. So I think you'll see even less communication. Let's go to SW:TOR...need I say more?
GW is probably the most social game I've played. People, or rather groups of people may not talk to each other, but we're all there playing together which is a hell of a lot more than what other games gave us. Most games wanted you at each others throats, or competing for mining nodes.
My advice to you...if you want people to talk to you...try talking to them? Most gamers these days aren't going to just come to you like some outreach program.
I sort of agree with your well written reply here, but...
I don't really think the issues he brought up is the ones that you talk about, not all the time atleast..
When there is a possibility to solo or "mind your own buisness" , the majority of players tend to do just that, it's just human nature.
For the true creation of friends you have to co-operate, with solving a dungeon or other difficult tasks, , it's true however that many players come with personal friends and/or guilds already i would say the majority without having a back up for this claim
There is naturally several reasons for the OP to consider
1. Could it be the games fault, well It coud be, by providing to much things that can be made alone you will see less players talk, since it isn't needed . And having a auto group feature sounds exellent on paper ..but all you get is 4 anonimous player dolls on the right side of your UI. And here is the place where I see the OP..
2 Could it be he's own fault. Yes ofcourse..for many reasons, and obvious reasons that we don't have to discuss
3.Could it be the voice communication (Team speak, ventrilo and skype) ..Well yes, also as you mentioned most players chat with their personal friends already via these methods.
Comments
I love this completely brainless non-argument of "You are grouped with everyone around you all the time"....have you never heard the expression " The loneliest place is amongst a crowd of strangers" ?
If you want to have a group & have a social experience in GW2 you need a guild, you need to do dungeons. The open-world game is for mindlessly zerging around, it is the quintessential essence of massively single-player refined into an art-form.
Humans have not yet evolved a truly engaging hive-mind so zerging is always going to be unsatisfying because there's just zero real interaction going on, you are all sharing the virtual space co-operatively, but if you vanished nobody would bat an eyelid.
Love that expression
I agree. It is somewhat unsettling when people tell you 'but you are always grouped up and playing with others so it is a social MMO'. But where is the communication? one can be lonely among the zerg too if all are just running around like silent bobbing heads.
And God knows i have tried, many..many..many times to strike a conversation but other than ocassional ok...yes and no.... people just don't want to talk. So i stick to my guild for socialising.
Bite Me
Not for me.
/yell chat is usually has a conversation going, people pointing out what's happening where in the area or what Champions are up etc... Hell, I have no idea how, but while finishing up Hinterlands tonight the map chat had a huge debate going on about rape.
That's right.
Rape.
Don't ask me how lol.
My gaming blog
I've not played GW2 & I have no plans to play it, but on the question of unsocial people in these MMO's is a big problem for these games in the long term.
Some people commented above that "I want to play with others, but I dont want to talk to them." Well, that's just a stupid statement right there as if that's the case, you might aswell have the devs provide you with a game full of bots OR maybe the people with this stupid point of view only really want a solo game where the A.I. is so good it's pretty much human, so they get that from MMO's provided by the other players they never talk to.
I stopped playing my current MMO's recently because I felt like I was playing with Bots instead of people, or I might aswell be playing with bots. Solo rpg's do "pve" better than any MMO can provide & PvP games like first person shooters do "pvp" better and more balanced than any MMO could hope to anyway. So why even play MMO's then? The only reason is to play/interact & join a community within these games. Otherwise you're just fooling yourself.
Finally, before some solo-oriented player comes along and states that they are a "special little snowflake that deserves to be allowed to play these MMO's anyway they want because they bought/sub the same as anyone else", I say to them that they are playing the game wrong & they should be (and hopefully are) in a miniority that the developers of MMO's should happily be ignoring. The devs of these games should be asking themselves "does this feature make people interact with other players?" If not, then it should be either dropped completely or pushed way down the priority list, imo.
i think you should find a guild
by guild i mean real guild not zerg guild
smaller guild are more socialized than these big ones where no one know eachother and are full ofguys who farm influence points and never talk to others
Not grouping is common in virtually every MMO these days. Check the individual forums and there will be a thread about it somewhere. It's the players, not the games.
So, stop being so passive and waiting for someone to interact with you - START interacting. Set the ball rolling.
+1
Join a guild for regular chat. Or stop for a moment and participate in casual conversations in /m or /s - they happen all the time. Join DE crowd for some mindless zerg. Or get a group for dungeon. Really, GW2 isn't very different from other MMOs in this department.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
its much more unsocial than any other mmo in the market atm
Hah....I found SWTOR to be much, much, much more desolate in the social aspect than GW2.
People talk when they want to talk.
For example, I don't feel communication starved. I talk to people all the time - at work and at home. I have foums to discuss things I'm interested in. When I have a question, I'll probably google it or ask it on the official forums.
Once in a while I write something in /m but generally speaking I don't log in just to chat. I usually stop to revive someone or help in a tough fight so in a way I let my actions speak for me.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
SWG was one of the most social MMOs I've ever played.
Especially the pre cu era where you needed to see ents and medics on a regular basis.
Too bad so many players think of it as " a waste of time" .....
I find GW2 a bit "quiet" 'cause majority of players use global chat channels rather than speaking in speech bubbles.
I like that you don't have to grp with anyone at events but just be around other players.
You know how many convo's I've struck up with people by rezzing randoms? Lots. Dead bodies are like campfires... People all come in to help, gossip, and then move on.
Honestly, only people who've yet to "say" back to me are people with names like xoichou or li Ching or the like.
Edit: damn you autocorrect
So, the OP is mad, because no one talks to him? You mean a game where people probably started playing with RL friends, or brought a Guild over from a different game, or have their own "crew" they play with and probably have skype/TS/Vent is antisocial? You mean a game that almost forces team play and cooperation with strangers is antisocial.
Look, man. I'm not sure what the big bill is with some of these guys complaining about this is, but some people just don't want to talk to you. Though I've talked to plenty of complete strangers in game and had a good laugh and danced for a few minutes before parting ways. I've even had people group up with me for some jumping puzzles that were really difficult, or for a boss in a cave that was sort of off the radar.
So because a random stranger won't just stop and have a long drawn out conversation with you and tell you about his kids the game is antisocial? Hmm..so lets transfer this same community to a different game and see if it gets any better. Lets all go play, hmm Aion, and everyone make a whatever class you want. Most classes in that game, from what I remember, could solo most things. So I think you'll see even less communication. Let's go to SW:TOR...need I say more?
GW is probably the most social game I've played. People, or rather groups of people may not talk to each other, but we're all there playing together which is a hell of a lot more than what other games gave us. Most games wanted you at each others throats, or competing for mining nodes.
My advice to you...if you want people to talk to you...try talking to them? Most gamers these days aren't going to just come to you like some outreach program.
Depend on game experience i think, it have been much different for me, i often talk with people and meet some nice one, The game itself doesn't punish you for sharing the game experience and more than often i decided to carry on with some people and do more quest. If your problem is grouping in the litteral term of it, its a no issue since grouping option doesn't give much except a private chat and some dots.
As well in wvw my server is pretty much active and i got to know meet and befriend some guys and guild, so i don't see the issue, but as i said everyone experience can be different and i am very sociable.
The way it is now works perfectly for me. I can play with ad-hoc groups of real people without any barriers or limitations, making it more organic and interesting then playing with bots. I can also socially interact with people because i chose to, not because the game forces me to.
In fact, i think it's quite amazing in any game that manages to implement such systems. I can be the lonliest lone-wolf in the world with a phobia of social interaction, and still play a social game with other people without being scared off. The barriers to social interaction are removed. And i think that's what it's all about, removing barriers. Not creating systems that force people together for the sake of being "social". That tends to lead to more conflicts then friendships.
But as a wise man once said "I can only show you the door"...
I think his issue is that GW2 feels like walking downtown on the main strip. Sure there are lots of people but no one really ackowledges that other people around them. They go about there own business. Sure you have some people who are sitting at a table at a sidewalk cafe talking and interacting with each other but for the most part its just people all walking past each other lookng up long enough to not bump into anyone.
I can easily see how someone could feel this way with DEs. I have done a number of DEs and it basicly is the same thing, a crowd of random people all just zerging the objective and doing their own thing in a crowd and once then the majority slip back into the shadows.
I will say though to the OP. If you want to be social then do so and don't expect someone else or the game to do it for you. Most people who play MMOs nowadays play them as single player RPGs and everyone around them may as well be an NPC. You need to find the minority who play MMORPGs as they should be, group based.
Also, from what I've seen, most people came to this game with friends and already have small cliques put together. Wether it be a big guild, or a small group of friends thats how it is now adays. People move sort of like a pack of wolves but are always willing to take on new members to the group. I've met several friends so far, same as I did in MMO's before. No different. I think another poster had it right. It's all about the individuals experience. But if you want to be social. You have to try to be social. No handouts.
Sadly the social aspect of current day MMO's is almost non-existent. I enjoy the social part of MMO's if I didn't I'd play console games. Hopefully this trend will end. However I don't see that happening. All these themepark MMO's today don't have a solid social community, because after 6 months or so the content is done and the only people left are fan boi's and the elitist PVP punks.
SWTOR almost turned me off to MMO's for good, thankfully the news of Vanguard going F2P got me to resub and I couldn't be happier. Sandpark games like VG have great communities where people actually converse and group often not just to do one quest or dungeon. VG is a dying breed though. Mordern day MMO's have an average shelf life of about 6 months. The studio's money grab what they can in that time and have another title to replace it.
I haven't bought GW2 yet mainly because of the SWTOR debacle. That being said it's just not Bioware or any other company the whole industry and the themepark design has changed the social climate of MMOs.
I am one of the "anti-social" players. I do respond if talked to but I don't join parties or guilds. My reason - I am a serious, sensitive person. There are too many rectums in mmos. Barrens chat is mild in comparison to some of the chat I have seen since WOW. Sure I like humor (and I did enjoy the Chuck Norris jokes most of the time) but the insults I can do without.
If you want to socialize that is what forums are for. When I am in the game I want to play not stand around at the "water cooler".
Though you can classify me as anti-social one of the reasons that I love RIFT and GW2 is that you can be in groups fighting for a common good. My favorite times are being in groups and having to overcome enemies. But I also like to play games at my own pace so though forced grouping can be fun I don't do it to the exclusion of everything else.
As for guilds - in my mmo beginnings (10 years ago) I joined a lot of guilds. I found only two that were not "clique" based. If you were not part of the "cool" group you were basically tolerated and nothing else. Of the two that I enjoyed one fell apart after a tragedy struck the founders and the other I had to leave because I moved and could not keep the same playing times. In the last few years my guild experience has not been fulfilling at all. You can blame it on me, I am just too sensitive.
Agreed, no compulsory grouping, no socializing other than the RP.
Wow.. that's a the most fan boy biased definition of group play i have ever seen. Just being in the same area with other players and hitting the same mob is NOT group play. GW2's leveling experience is way more single player than any themepark MMO out there at the moment, except WoW's. In TOR you must form a group and work WITH the people participating in order to do the content in the heroic areas. In GW2 things go like this: your sylvari ranger is questing in an area when a "new event" message pops up. You rush to the scene along with everyone else, zerg / dps the enemy down and then everyone goes on his way.
So far my only interaction with other players outside the guild i'm in, and by ineraction i DON'T mean hiting the same target, is when i revive someone. I tried to form groups while questing in Kessex Hills and no one was interested.
I sort of agree with your well written reply here, but...
I don't really think the issues he brought up is the ones that you talk about, not all the time atleast..
When there is a possibility to solo or "mind your own buisness" , the majority of players tend to do just that, it's just human nature.
For the true creation of friends you have to co-operate, with solving a dungeon or other difficult tasks, , it's true however that many players come with personal friends and/or guilds already i would say the majority without having a back up for this claim
There is naturally several reasons for the OP to consider
1. Could it be the games fault, well It coud be, by providing to much things that can be made alone you will see less players talk, since it isn't needed . And having a auto group feature sounds exellent on paper ..but all you get is 4 anonimous player dolls on the right side of your UI. And here is the place where I see the OP..
2 Could it be he's own fault. Yes ofcourse..for many reasons, and obvious reasons that we don't have to discuss
3.Could it be the voice communication (Team speak, ventrilo and skype) ..Well yes, also as you mentioned most players chat with their personal friends already via these methods.